


Little By Little You Stop Loving Me

by bloodsongs



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, F/F, implied infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:18:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsongs/pseuds/bloodsongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells herself she forgets, but the reality of it is that the pain is never more present or more bittersweet than when she is in the arms of someone else, because all she can think of when someone brushes their knuckles against her face is: “Why aren’t you her?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little By Little You Stop Loving Me

Santana’s heart breaks a little as Brittany presses her down, lips brushing against her cheek tenderly, so tenderly, it feels more like a whisper than a kiss. They’re careful to never really linger, never really stop, because when they do and when they question this, it becomes all too real and all too painful in the light of the reality that they can’t be together, because they don’t want it, they can’t, and it’s too complicated: the knots, the betrayals, the anger that bled into despair, so much despair.  
  
And despite everything, it’s a peculiar kind of gravitation that draws them back to one another, through the years and the scars, raked deep across Santana’s heart every time Brittany looks her in the eye and says they’re not, they shouldn’t, but kisses her anyway, because she can’t not. And something dies inside her each time with every touch, because honesty has fled them, laughter left them, leaving only shallow husks of what they once were.   
  
They feel the fear, the bite of the cruelty that society treats them to every day, because they can’t simply love.  
  
They can’t simply be.

“You don’t want this,” she says, and she never has before, too afraid of losing this fragile connection between them, this last frayed thread that links them through too-hot kisses and the tears that they both pretend not to feel as they make love under the cover of night, in dingy hotels when Brittany shoves her against walls, hungry with her eyes glittering, and Santana gives in because she needs it, needs it all.   
  
Brittany ignores her, biting sharply at her ear, but tightens her hold in Santana’s hair.   
  
“You don’t want this,” Santana repeats, and slides her arms around Brittany’s neck, moving down to tease at those lips, those that haunt the curves of her neck, her shoulders every waking moment they’re together. “You don’t want me.”

The sheets are rough beneath her, digging into the naked skin of her back. Brittany toys with the lace of her bra, fingers slipping just enough inside to make Santana’s breath catch, and then she’s kissing down Santana’s throat, echos of familiar patterns she remembers all too well.   
  
It’s stifling, this heat between them. She closes her eyes when Brittany murmurs her name, over and over, pressing it down like a memory.   
  
“It’s all right.” And she links her fingers through Brittany’s, ignoring the dull ache that clutches at her heart when she brushes against the edge of a ring that wasn’t hers to give, the cut of the diamond leaving callous marks against her skin. It’s cold, not unlike what Brittany’s become. “It’s all right if you don’t.”  
  
And it is all right, because there’ll never be another. There’ll never be anyone quite like Brittany, the force of fire and love and utter sincerity, although it’s a struggle to reconcile this stranger who sings like her, kisses like her, with the girl she was once so in love with, and is still trapped in an endless loop of longing for.  
  
But Santana can’t stop, because it’s all she’s ever known, and all she ever wants to know.  
  
It’s all right, because Santana won’t leave. Can’t leave.  
  
Brittany kisses her, the way she always does when she doesn’t want Santana to speak, when she doesn’t want to bring this festering thing between them. It’s toxic, the way they’re falling apart. Santana cycles through different lovers, some nameless and some lovely women who’d cared for her, all in her effort to just tuck the heated recollection of Brittany’s whispered words against her skin, the sinuous arch of her taller body moving on top of her as they rocked together in sweet, sweet rhythm.   
  
She tells herself she forgets, but the reality of it is that the pain is never more present or more bittersweet than when she is in the arms of someone else, because all she can think of when someone brushes their knuckles against her face is: “Why aren’t you her?”  
  
And Brittany – Santana doesn’t know about Brittany’s life outside of their liaisons, not anymore. They share nothing. They don’t speak. They meet at the same place when they can, when they’re in the city together, at the same time, because it’s routine, like clockwork, and she can’t remember how life was like before 8:30pm on certain Wednesday nights, down at the hotel by that corner, behind the diner they used to love.  
  
(She remembers flashes, but she tells herself she doesn’t. Flashes of their old red uniforms, when her hair was still in a severe ponytail and her face pulled in a severer frown, with her best friend bright and happy and not a line of worry to be seen. Better days, of sixteens and dreams and songs that would never die.  
  
But they did.  
  
Of course they did.)  
  
Santana isn’t a fool, but desperation fuels her, drives her fortnightly visits to Brittany. Courage has failed her; time and again she broke as she saw Brittany’s face, a kind of odd twisted earnestness to it as she dragged Santana down to the bed with her, eliminating all thoughts of telling Brittany to leave her husband, to return to her, to please continue as they did before, could they not be happy together if they gave it a chance, surely–  
  
No. Time has killed her hope, her once unwavering belief. Nothing will come of it now.  
  
She seeks a sweet escape in the moments with Brittany like a drug. Only there’s never a high, never, just a permanent drop as she finds herself sinking slowly into the abyss a little more every time, when Brittany’s eyes get icier by the day. They are close, but always distant.  
  
She’ll take what she can get, because she can have nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even in this fandom, but I was prompted by a friend to write some Brittana. Hence! :)


End file.
